Midnights Children

Mother acquired her dream of petrol pumps, which would be the growing obsession of her old age; but she bombarded Pia with it, to the actress’s disgust.
    “Why that woman doesn’t ask me to be shorthand typist?” Pia wailed to Hanif and Mary and me at breakfast. “Why not taxi-driver, or handloom weaver? I tell you, this pumpery-shumpery makes me wild.”
    My uncle quivered (for once in his life) on the edge of anger. “There is a child present,” he said, “and she is your mother; show her respect.”
    “Respect she can have,” Pia flounced from the room, “but she wants
gas
”.
    … And my most-treasured bit-part of all was played out when during Pia and Hanifs regular card-games with friends, I was promoted to occupy the sacred place of the son she never had. (Child of an unknown union, I have had more mothers than most mothers have children; giving birth to parents has been one of my stranger talents—a form of reverse fertility beyond the control of contraception, and even of the Widow herself.) In the company of visitors, Pia Aziz would cry: “Look, friends, here’s my own crown prince! The jewel in my ring! The pearl in my necklace!” And she would draw me towards her, cradling my head so that my nose was pushed down against her chest and nestled wonderfully between the soft pillows of her indescribable … unable to cope with such delights, I pulled my head away. But I was her slave; and I know now why she permitted herself such familiarity with me. Prematurely testicled, growing rapidly, I nevertheless wore (fraudulently) the badge of sexual innocence: Saleem Sinai, during his sojourn at his uncle’s home, was still in shorts. Bare knees proved my childishness to Pia; deceived by ankle-socks, she held my face against her breasts while her sitar-perfect voice whispered in my good ear: “Child, child, don’t fear; your clouds will soon roll by.”
    For my uncle, as well as my histrionic aunt, I acted out (with growing polish) the part of surrogate son. Hanif Aziz was to be found during the day on the striped sofa, pencil and exercise book in hand, writing his pickle epic. He wore his usual lungi wound loosely around his waist and fastened with an enormous safety-pin; his legs protruded hairily from its folds. His fingernails bore the stains of a lifetime of Gold Flakes; his toenails seemed similarly discolored. I imagined him smoking cigarettes with his toes. Highly impressed by the vision, I asked him if he could, in fact, perform this feat; and without a word, he inserted Gold Flake between big toe and its sidekick and wound himself into bizarre contortions. I clapped wildly, but he seemed to be in some pain for the rest of the day.
    I ministered to his needs as a good son should, emptying ashtrays, sharpening pencils, bringing water to drink; while he, who after his fabulist beginnings had remembered that he was his father’s son and dedicated himself against everything which smacked of the unreal, scribbled out his ill-fated screenplay.
    “Sonny Jim,” he informed me, “this damn country has been dreaming for five thousand years. It’s about time it started waking up.” Hanif was fond of railing against princes and demons, gods and heroes, against, in fact, the entire iconography of the Bombay film; in the temple of illusions, he had become the high priest of reality; while I, conscious of my miraculous nature, which involved me beyond all mitigation in the (Hanif-despised) myth-life of India, bit my lip and didn’t know where to look.
    Hanif Aziz, the only realistic writer working in the Bombay film industry, was writing the story of a pickle-factory created, run and worked in entirely by women. There were long scenes describing the formation of a trade union; there were detailed descriptions of the pickling process. He would quiz Mary Pereira about recipes; they would discuss, for hours, the perfect blend of lemon, lime and garam masala. It is ironic that this arch-disciple of naturalism should have been so skillful (if unconscious) a prophet of his own family’s fortunes; in the indirect kisses of the
Lovers of Kashmir
he foretold my mother and her Nadir-Qasim’s meetings at the Pioneer Café; and in his un-filmed chutney scenario, too, there lurked a prophecy of deadly accuracy.
    He besieged Homi Catrack with scripts. Catrack produced none of them; they sat in the small Marine Drive apartment, covering every available surface, so that you had to pick them off the toilet